I am a keeper of lists. Everything I eat is written down in a diary. Each day’s appointments are detailed in another. Then there are the notebooks, the ones that chronicle everything from recipes to travel itineraries. It is only in the past few years that I have taken to keeping a garden notebook too – a habit I can highly recommend.
My gardening diary has become invaluable. A vivid orange cover with a black paper spine and golden script, it reminds me of the 'Cairo' tulips that fill the planters each spring. ‘May 2nd, ordered tulips’ acts not only as an aide-mémoire for the following year’s orders but forms a comprehensive list of purchases to check off as they arrive. It is rather like a Victorian cook’s receipt book.
You may also like:
- Nigel Slater on why scented plants were his first priority when making his garden
- Nigel Slater on serving up dinner to his nemesis and other failures in the garden
- How to keep your garden looking great through autumn
- Winter flowering plants: experts' choice of the best winter flowers
The notebook becomes more detailed with each passing month: a collection of what is out or coming into flower; which seeds I have just planted and which ones have failed; as well as a record of from where I bought each plant. Inevitably, the weather gets a mention.
On a rainy January afternoon, the wind whistling down the chimney, there is something both comforting and deeply heartening about sifting through pictures of the garden last spring.
Most useful of all has been the record of plant feeding. You might think I could remember when I last fed the tomatoes, the dahlias and the pelargoniums. Truth told, I tend to forget. By writing such notes down, it saves the inevitable confusion that leads either to weak plants I failed to feed or yellowing ones that have been fed too often.
Bloom-scrolling beats doom-scrolling hands down. Yet, I must admit I prefer the written record.
The diary has its practical uses but there is another less tangible advantage of keeping a written record. Such detailed notes provide food for my horticultural ‘dream time’. Those ‘what-if’ moments that can become lost hours when the garden is redesigned in my head. The notes allow me to know what already works and what might not, the opportunities and the possibilities. It is a place to scribble down a plethora of pipe dreams.
Accuracy, however, is essential. The words ‘tomato feed’ scribbled in the margin of a notebook can mean several things. It could mean that I need to buy some, I have actually ordered some, or, that I have applied it to the plants.
Comprehensive notes may seem unnecessary at the time of writing, but essential if you are not to end up with three bottles of identical plant food or, of course, none. It is a bad habit of mine and might explain why I have SO many packets of mycorrhizal fungi in the gardening cupboard. The almost indecipherable note ‘Canon Went’ was a puzzler until I looked it up and found it was the cultivar of Linaria to which I had taken a fancy.
Dates are interesting but can be misleading. Convinced the crocuses were late this spring, I was able to check against last year’s gardening diary and was surprised to find they were only a day or two out of sync. The memory plays tricks. Noticing that my Cornus kousa was over a month later coming into bud than last year almost risked my dear tree ending up on the log pile. Had I taken too much notice of my diary, it may have been the end of a tree that was in fact just sleeping in after a record flowering the year before.
I’ve always marvelled at those gardeners who paint detailed planting plans in watercolours, each perennial depicted as a pastel cloud labelled in tiny, sometimes beautiful, Latin script. I once had a go myself, using a fine artist’s brush to colour code the plan in pink and mauve, deep red and orange, taking as much care not to go over the lines as I did aged seven. Inevitably, though pleasing to look at, my plan was an inaccurate record.
Getting the scale right was beyond me; a single cushion of hepatica somehow appearing larger than the tree whose roots it sat among. I will try again one day.
There are also photographic records. Simply by scrolling through my phone I can see what was in flower in the same week in any year from 2013 onwards. Bloom-scrolling beats doom-scrolling hands down. Yet, I must admit I prefer the written record.
All the photographic evidence does is to make me think the dahlias are less healthy than they were in 2020. It is also a reminder of plants long gone, a friend no longer with us but still much loved. I don’t need an annual reminder of the tragic loss of my enormous Pinus mugo.
Where photography has proved its worth is in checking for opportunities – the space that may take another verbascum or where you can fit in another rose. In my experience, a much more reliable method than memory alone. With the garden filling up with plants, a record of ‘vacant spaces’ is essential if I’m to avoid spur of the moment purchases. One glance at recent pictures on my phone changes “Of course I have room for it” to “no, I really haven’t”.
On a rainy January afternoon, the wind whistling down the chimney, there is something both comforting and deeply heartening about sifting through pictures of the garden last spring. On the greyest day, scrolling photographs on your phone or reading a colourful, gently descriptive paragraph in your garden notebook can warm the spirit as much as any fire.
It is often just the reminder I need that all will be well, the crocuses will return, and any minute the tiny magenta bubbles will appear along the grey stems of the Cercis. Our records, whether written, photographed, scribbled down or immaculately painted, are more than purely academic, practical notes. They are there to help us cherish the work we have done in our gardens, enrich our gardening dreams and bring us hope.
